Page 9 of Tiger Born

His other shirt would’ve been nothing but bloody rags. “Where is my hoodie?” he asked.

“Washing machine. I’ll move it to the dryer when we head to the kitchen.”

“Thanks. It has some sentimental value to me.” He wasn’t quite ready to tell her it was the last hoodie in his possession from before he was Turned. He had a lot of memories attached to that old thing. He’d pulled it on after the fight to hide the injuries.

As he gingerly pulled his T-shirt on, he followed her out of the bedroom and into a hallway and realized they were in a basement. Good. That would hide their scent some. Clever girl.

“How long was I out?” he asked, lifting up the t-shirt to pull a few more staples from his healing skin.

“About twelve hours. My turn for questions.”

“Shoot,” he mumbled, pulling another staple. These stupid things hurt.

“Why are your brothers trying to kill me?”

“Brother, singular.”

“You keep saying brothers, plural.”

“Marsden doesn’t know what’s happening. He just knows Stellan is dragging his tiger into a hunt. I bet he didn’t even realize they were hunting you.”

“Stellan, Marsden, and Damian,” she murmured. “Do you have any more siblings?”

“Nope. My parents wanted a big family, but Stellan came along and they were immediately good with the number of kids they had.”

“He was a handful?”

“From birth.”

“Were you a tiger since birth?”

He plucked the last staple and refused to answer. She didn’t need to know all the tiger stuff. No one did. That was for him and his brothers and the handful of other Cats that existed.

“Your communication skills are atrocious,” she pointed out as she took a hard right into a laundry room.

“Huh? Why do you say that?” he grumbled, rubbing his hand over his horrifically scarred torso. Stellan was going to pay for this.

“Because when you didn’t want to answer a question, you just ignored me, but you could’ve just said, ‘Hey that’s too deep,’ and I would’ve understood and asked something else.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you training me to respond how you want me to respond?”

“It’s just courtesy. Settle down.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes and counted to three for patience so he wouldn’t unleash a snarl at her for telling him what to do.

He hated it when people told him to settle down. It was a pet peeve.

“Why are you angry?” she asked.

“I’m not.”

“Then why are you growling?”

Dammit, she was right. It was soft in his chest, but it was there.

“Fiancé,” he reminded her from their conversation earlier.

“Oh. You almost met him last night if you weren’t being followed by your serial killer brothers. He works at the hospital. He’s a doctor there.”